Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Saturn's Q1 2026 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After management's remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. I will now turn the call over to Ms. Cindy Gray, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Cindy.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us to hear management's remarks about Saturn's Q1 2026 results. Please note that our financial statements, MD&A, and press release are all filed on SEDAR+ and available on our website. Some of the statements on today's call may contain forward-looking information, references to non-IFRS, and other financial measures. As such, listeners are encouraged to review the disclaimers outlined in our most recent MD&A. Listeners are also cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements since a number of factors could cause the actual future results to differ materially from the targets and expectations expressed. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, unless expressly required by applicable securities law.
For further information on risk factors, please view our AIF filed on SEDAR+ and our website. Also note all amounts discussed today are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. On today's call, we'll hear from John Jeffrey, Saturn's CEO, Scott Sanborn, our CFO, and Justin Kaufmann, our Chief Development Officer, followed by a Q&A. I'll now hand the call over to John.
Thank you, Cindy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us today. Saturn's first quarter of 2026 built on the momentum we delivered in Q4. Volumes of over 43,100 BOEs a day beat analyst expectations for the seventh consecutive quarter, while we exceeded our quarterly guidance by more than 1,600 BOE a day. We also came in ahead of the analyst forecast on adjusted funds flow and free funds flow, a notable achievement since we only benefited from one month of a stronger oil price in March. This really highlights what a difference one month can make. Earlier in the year, plenty of market commentary was calling for oil to drop below U.S. $60 per barrel due to oversupply concerns, and it traded around that level for the first two months of the year.
Fast-forward to mid-March, the Iranian conflict drove prices significantly higher, with the WTI benchmark averaging $91 per barrel in the month. Despite the volatility and ongoing uncertainty about how and when this conflict will be resolved, Saturn's focus has not changed. We continue to navigate those factors within our control, including being disciplined but opportunistic in our capital allocation. We remain committed to reducing debt and protecting the downside. Ultimately, our goal is to improve per-share metrics and create lasting value for shareholders. Our 2026 capital budget was based off CAD 60 WTI, we intentionally kept it lower to protect the future value of the product in the ground. As the price of oil has risen drastically since the beginning of March, Saturn has closely monitored the macro environment and the forward curve for pricing.
Since spring breakup is underway, our ability to drill is restricted, so we're using this natural pause to assess market conditions and explore potential adjustments to our capital program. We believe that the nimble nature of our asset base and the flexibility of our capital program represents key differentiators for Saturn. We've shown time and again that our team is ready and able to ramp up or slow down activity without negative impacts to the assets or partners in the service sector, and this time is no different. We're planning to accelerate capital from the second half of 2026 into Q2, which is typically our lowest capital expenditure period due to breakup. Subject to whether we are aiming to get rigs back into the field more quickly this year, targeting late May to mid-June.
This is expected to enable Saturn to bring new volumes on production earlier and capitalize on a stronger oil price for the benefit of the company and our shareholders. Should oil remain elevated, we may look to update our full year 2026 capital budget and guidance to better reflect what the curve is indicating and increase cash flow generation. Debt repayment remains paramount for Saturn. Our results in Q1 demonstrate our ongoing commitment to reducing net debt. Exiting Q1, our net debt declined 5% compared to year-end 2025. Every dollar of debt that we take down is accretive to our equity value and further improves our per-share metrics. Alongside debt reduction, we are committed to returning capital to shareholders via Saturn share buyback program. Our daily NCIB purchases continued through Q1 and helped to showcase the successful execution of our buyback.
Since August of 2025, when we renewed our NCIB, the number of shares we have bought back is nearing the maximum allowable for a one-year period, equal to 12.1 million shares. As our share price strengthened into March, we've reduced the number of shares being purchased each day while remaining the same approximate dollar spend. To further minimize dilution, Saturn has elected to settle our equity-based compensation awards by purchasing shares in the open market rather than issuing new shares from Treasury. This is a deliberate outcome of our strategy and designed to support per share value increases across all performance metrics. Another element of our long-term strategy is hedging, which protects the downside, particularly when debt is included in the capital stack.
As prices have increased, Saturn has continued to layer on incremental contracts while still remaining meaningfully exposed to higher prices on our unhedged barrels. Scott will speak further to our hedging program later on the call. From a capital allocation perspective, we will continue to prioritize free funds flow towards a combination of debt reduction, ongoing share buyback, and other initiatives that improve our per share metric, such as accretive tuck-in acquisitions that meet our screening activity. In the first quarter, for example, we closed a small tuck-in acquisition that fits perfectly within our Flat Lake area of southeast Saskatchewan. This core-up acquisition adds immediate value to Saturn with current production in the 300-400 BOE a day range, future identified locations, infrastructure consolidation opportunities, cost reduction potential, and a strategic pipeline.
This pipeline has the potential to deliver oil into North Dakota pricing hub, which is currently realizing a premium to WTI. Saturn is currently in the process of bringing this pipeline back into service, and we are excited to see what this prospect has for us. I'm very proud of the work and the dedication of our team through another successful quarter, that their tireless effort and adherence to our strong safety culture. Scott will now provide a financial overview, followed by Justin concluding the call with a discussion about Q1 development and Saturn's go-forward program. Scott?
Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. Saturn's financial performance continued to excel this quarter, despite only realizing escalated oil prices beginning in March. The company generated adjusted funds flow of CAD 107 million or CAD 0.59 per basic share, beating the average analyst consensus by 5%, while our free funds flow of CAD 52 million exceeded the average consensus by 13%. Royalties in the quarter came in below guidance, averaging approximately 11% due to Alberta royalty incentive on new wells and the impact of the sliding scale royalty framework. Operating costs at CAD 24.9 per BOE were exactly at midpoint of our annual guidance range, but higher than previous quarter, reflecting the usual seasonality and colder weather conditions faced by our team during the first quarter.
With a rapid escalation of oil prices in March, we recorded a realized hedging loss of CAD 21 million or CAD 5.45 per BOE for the quarter as the market price for crude oil exceeded the price set in the company's derivative contracts. That said, our hedging program is working exactly as intended from a risk management perspective by influencing stability and certainty. Our hedging strategy goes beyond timing the cycle's tops and bottoms. It's about average costing and consistency, ensuring we can always meet our financial obligations while protecting Saturn's resilience. With the current price volatility, Saturn's strategy has been to add additional hedges at smaller increments but at higher frequency in order to capture average prices in the period and also weight those incremental volumes toward the near term as at favorable prices rather than the tail end of the curve in a declining price environment.
From an accounting perspective, the sharp move in commodity prices also drove a large unrealized hedging loss in the quarter, impacting net income and earnings per share figures. This created a wide swing in reported earnings, but the impact is non-cash, so it does not impact cash flow. As such, this quarter's earnings are not an accurate indicator of the cash-generating and debt-servicing capability of our business. Net debt declined 5% from the year-end 2025, and we exited Q1 with approximately CAD 725 million, reflecting Saturn's ongoing commitment to debt repayment. Saturn retains ample liquidity with a CAD 150 million credit facility. We had a small CAD 14 million draw at quarter end, plus an uncommitted accordion feature that can expand total capacity to CAD 250 million.
The no-call feature of our U.S-denominated senior notes expires in June this year and are subject to step-down premiums for the next two years. As a result, we continue to actively monitor yield curves and evaluate future opportunities that may allow Saturn to reduce our cost of capital and improve leverage metrics. Alongside debt repayment, we continue to prioritize the return of capital to shareholders. As John already mentioned, at March 31st, we had 181 million shares outstanding, 8% lower than the number just one year ago. During the first quarter, we returned over CAD 12 million to shareholders with a repurchase and cancellation of approximately 3.7 million shares under our NCIB. Since then, we have returned an additional CAD 3.4 million through open market purchases of 600,000 shares.
Despite the strong oil price environment and potential to generate higher income, Saturn remains well protected with over CAD 1.6 billion of tax pools. Given this coverage, we do not anticipate becoming cash taxable until 2028 and beyond, given our current capital allocation strategy. This contributes positively to free funds flow generation in the current environment. With that overview, I'll hand things over to Justin to talk through our Q1 development program and to review our capital going forward.
Thanks, Scott, and good morning, everyone. Q1 2026 production was above 43,000 barrels per day, carried through the momentum we achieved in the previous quarter. This led to Saturn beating analyst expectations for the 7th consecutive quarter, as John mentioned, showcasing how our wells continue to outperform type curve. Heading into spring breakup, Saturn had 4 rigs running. 3 rigs were drilling open-hole multilateral wells. We had 2 of the 3 rigs in the Bakken and 1 in the Midale on lands we acquired through our 2025 tuck-in. The 4th rig was drilling conventional Mississippian and Spearfish wells. We deployed CAD 45 million of capital in the quarter, which resulted in 23 gross wells being drilled, completed, and brought on production, contributing to our strong volumes.
The capital was directed to drill 21 wells in Southeast Saskatchewan, including 10 open-hole multilateral wells that included 5 Bakken, 3 Midale, and 2 Spearfish wells. In addition, we participated in 2 non-operating, non-accreting wells drilled in Central Alberta in our West Pembina area. Our Saturn team continues to be excited about our open-hole multi-well program, which offers some of the shortest payouts and highest returns in our inventory. As mentioned in our year-end 2025 press release, we drilled our fourth open-hole multi-well Spearfish well at 13-06, a 6-layer that came on with an IP30 of 365 barrels per day. This well had a peak volume rate of 400 barrels per day during the first 30 days and had a capital efficiency of CAD 5,000 per barrel.
Given this performance, we would expect to see the 13-06 well included on a list of the top-performing industry wells in Saskatchewan for April, compiled by independent research firms. This well is directly adjacent to our previous 16-05 Spearfish well, which exceeded type curve expectations by about 3 times and was profiled as a top producer in Saskatchewan. As John Jeffrey highlighted, flexibility has always been a key differentiator for our capital program. Saturn has demonstrated the ability to pivot quickly and scale activity up or down depending on commodity prices, which supports our decision to accelerate some capital from the back half of the year into Q2. Our original Q2 capital budget ranged between CAD 15 million and CAD 20 million and contemplated limited drilling.
However, we are now planning to bring forward approximately CAD 20 million of capital from the latter half of this year into Q2 , subject to weather conditions. In light of the strong price environment, we want to get rigs back in the field to target our short cycle time inventory, which allows us to rapidly bring on volumes on stream and capitalize on higher prices in the near term. By accelerating capital into Q2, we can get rigs back to work earlier than originally expected in Southeast Saskatchewan, where we are planning a staggered start after the May long weekend. As soon as the ground is firm, we plan to add a fifth rig in West Central Saskatchewan, targeting high impact fields, including our Viking and Success plays, which will supplement the existing four rigs running in Southeast Saskatchewan.
Depending on weather and based on current forecasts, Saturn anticipates drilling four to five wells in the West Central Saskatchewan area with an estimated 10 in total wells brought forward from our planned Q3 drilling in Southeast Saskatchewan. This capital acceleration is expected to result in Q2 2026 capital spending ranging between CAD 35 million and CAD 40 million, with quarterly volumes anticipated to average between 40 and 41 thousand barrels per day. Given that oil price appreciation over the past eight weeks and the forward curves looking favorable, Saturn is also exploring the potential to increase full year 2026 capital. Given approximately 70% of our total capital budget is deployed in Q3 and Q4, we believe any adjustments will be seamless from a rig availability, services, and efficiency standpoint.
With that, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us this morning, and we'll hand the call back to the operator to begin the Q&A.
At this time if you would like to ask a question, press star then one in your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Adam Gill with Ventum Financial. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Congrats on the solid quarter. Quick question from me. What exactly are you looking for in terms of oil prices to make the final decision to actually ramp up capital spending for the year? What's kind of the upper limit on where that spending could end up?
Well, really, thanks for joining us today, Adam. We're looking just for some stability here in the price. As everyone will tell you, the volatility is very hard to plan around. If we're seeing kind of sustained prices, mid to upper 70s, I think we're gonna take a hard look at expanding that capital plan. Again, we got a few weeks here before we're able to get back in the field, and weather dependent, of course. I think if we see oil kind of hanging in, you know, who the heck knows with what's going on. I think if we can see it high 70s, even in the 80s or higher, I think you could, you know, we could execute on. Basically, we went into last year with a CAD 320 million program.
We end up paring that back. I think getting back to that CAD 300 million mark, really what that would effectively done is just have deferred some of those wells into this year. We have the locations, the team is ready for it. We've already ramped up for that in the past. You know, I think about a 50% expansion to our CapEx plan would be the higher end if we see oil kind of close to that CAD 80 mark or even higher.
Okay. Sounds good. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Somerville with ROTH Canada. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes, sir.
Perfect. Thanks. A similar question, which is all price dependent, but debt and hedging. On the last call, I think you mentioned a repayment acceleration option on your bonds. I'm wondering if you could provide detail, any detail on the timing, like with potential timing window, and amounts around that. Then also, with either that or your, you know, your current amortization schedule, how does that impact the amount of hedging that you're likely to do going forward, yeah, given unpredictable oil prices and interesting futures?
Yeah. You know, again, the problem with the curve, as you can see, is just backwardation. It is starting to come up a little bit. Contractually, we have to maintain 50% rolling hedges for the next 12 months. Now, in a raised oil environment like we're seeing today, we are 55%, even closer to 60%. We are trying to take advantage of this high price. Again, you know, it was just four months ago, we came into this year guiding at $60. You can hedge out into Q1 of 2027 right now or closer to $80. Locking in some of that is what we're trying to do while we're bringing on more production. I'm gonna pass over to Scott to talk on the actual debt instrument itself.
Hey, Jamie. We have an no-call feature rolling off on June 15th, and the first step-down premium will be 4.81%. That's roughly $24 million in the event that we go to refinance that.
Perfect. Thanks. Just to clarify John's answer, there's no reduction in that 50% hedging for 12 months requirement as you're paying down the bonds. As long as they're there, that requirement stays in place. Is that what you're saying?
Well, that's right. It also aligns with what we are aiming to do here as a management team as well. Basically, that 12 months, in our opinion, gets through any major hiccups. Even if you go back to 2020 and COVID, if you look before COVID and after COVID, it took about 12 months to kind of resolve some of these issues. Basically, what we're trying to do here is that in any pricing environment, can we ensure that we can pay all our debt obligations? If, let's say, oil goes to five bucks a barrel, can we still satisfy all of our obligations as a company? That allows us to do so. Corporately, that does align with what we would do.
Now again, in this raised pricing environment, I think we're in a great position to take advantage of higher strip. Yes, as long as that those bonds are in place, that is the minimum we have to have.
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you for clarifying.
Hey, thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Chris Damas with BCMI Research. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. You have a significant shareholder that owns about 35% of the stock and also has a board member. They've indicated they're selling 10 million shares. I wondered, how do you handle the major shareholder when you're doing your NCIB? Secondly, can you give us some color on what GMT Capital's intent is and whether the company should probably try and shop that block around?
If you actually look back, they have posted that several times. That's just their kind of standard requirement that they, that they do post. They've never filled that or near that many. They've posted similar ones for some of their other bigger oil holdings as well. Basically, it just gives them flexibility. You actually seen over the years that they have grown their position, never shrank it despite having filed that. In fact, I think last year they had bought an additional 9 million shares through the market. That's they want the flexibility to buy and sell kind of at whim, so they file those on all of their major holdings that we can see. That is pretty standard. They've never sold anywhere kind of near that amount.
Again, it's, it's their, it's their strategy. I'm not too concerned. We stay in great contact with them, and we work very closely with them. Same with, again, all of our key shareholders. They're the top ten we're in pretty frequent conversation with. They're quite happy, as near as I can tell, with what we're doing, with the share performance. Again, they've been very supportive. In terms of actual strategy, if it comes to, you know, Libra or GMT or any of these, I can't speak to that, but I, you know, will say that they have filed these reports. Similar companies that filed them in the past with us, year over year, their shareholdings tend to grow with a little bit of buying and selling on the margin.
None of that is overly concerning, but I will say we're very happy to have them as part of the story and our relationship with them has been fantastic.
Yeah. Listen, I really believe the stock is undervalued. It's a bit of a gem. With your strategy, I like the idea of counting pencils at the head office, which is very rare these days. Is there any indication that you might wanna put the company up for sale, given you've been active in M&A on the other sides?
Yeah. I think for CAD 20 bucks a share, you know, we'd be willing to let it go, I think. Listen, you know, what we've built here, I agree with you. I think we should be trading closer to our 1P. You know, right now, our 1P on the last reserve deck that came out, at the end of March, it is CAD 11.32. You know, I'd say a lot of companies, that should be the floor of their value. Again, you fast-forward to the end of the year, once we have more debt paid down, more shares paid down, you're gonna see that, you know, probably approaching CAD 13-CAD 14. You know, again, it's not our company to sell. We're just a steward of shareholders' capital.
For us as a management team, you know, I can say we didn't design this thing for a quick flip. We have a great team here, we have great assets, and we've got, you know, 20-plus years of drilling inventory that we'd like to see exploited, and we wanna get the value for the shareholders and everybody. If there's an offer that comes along and the shareholders believe it's in their best interest, then that's our job to execute. In the interim, we're just running the best company we can. Put it this way,
Yeah
I haven't heard any of our major shareholders ask for that or none of them have came to us and said, Listen, let's try and get a quick flip out of this. All of them that we've talked to, I think see the long-term value and support kind of our vision in executing.
Okay, thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Joshua Santos with BNN Bloomberg. Please go ahead.
Hi. First of all, congratulations for this outstanding results. You mentioned that we are gonna bring some CapEx forward. My question is if there is room for accelerating that even more and starting some wells earlier.
Yeah. So as you're aware with what we deal with specifically in our field, Central Alberta and Saskatchewan, we deal with breakup, where kind of from generally from mid-March until mid-May, we can't get out in the field just due to road bans and other things. I'm actually gonna pass over to Justin Kaufmann, and JK should be able to kind of walk through the intricacies of drilling and what we're able to do given our timeline and the weather.
Yeah. Generally, we get out into the field somewhere between mid-June and July. There's a lot of wet weather that we're dealing with coming out of spring. This year, we do wanna accelerate that. We're gonna be out in the field next week presetting our Viking wells. The following weeks we'll have a staggered start with about 4 rigs out the door after May long with the 5th rig in June. 5 operated rigs before the end of this quarter with a 6th starting just after the July 1 weekend. We are accelerating that from our previous plan. That acceleration will be in Southeast and West Central. We have mentioned before 3 core areas. We really like the short full cycle times of the Viking.
We can drill a well in three to four days, complete it, bring it online within two weeks. We're looking to take advantage of these commodity prices, and that's what we're doing in those plays.
Thank you very much. I will pass the line.
Since there are no more questions, this concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.